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.Out the cockpit's viewport, she could see the prow of an old frigate, built like a set of small exercise weights but a third of a kilometer long, turning away from its planetary orbit and pointing its bow toward space.“Wonderful,” she said.“Maybe now this catastrophe is over.”Chapter FifteenCENTERPOINT STATIONJACEN MARCHED IN THRACKAN'S DIRECTION, NOTING THE SIHOUETTES of more soldiers and possibly combat droids arriving from the distance beyond his cousin.Thrackan turned to the side, activated a door, and jumped through.It slid closed behind him, leaving nothing between Jacen and the distant soldiers.The enemy opened fire.At this long range, even with as many enemies as were firing, Jacen had no trouble deflecting incoming blaster bolts.He charged forward, sending most of the bolts back toward the enemy line, where front-row agents caught them with their crowd-control shields, sometimes staggering from the strength of the blasts.Jacen halted beside the door Thrackan had entered.Pressing on toward his original goal and drawing more and more enemies toward him—and, in all probability, Ben—would not benefit the mission.Keeping them well away from the centers where sabotage was to take place would.He slapped the OPEN button on the doorway.The door slid up.Jacen grinned.Thrackan, certain that Jacen would charge the oncoming CorSec agents and droids, hadn't even bothered to lock the door down.He found himself in a long hallway with a corresponding door at the far end, forty meters away.That door was open and Thrackan was just on the other side of it, looking back at Jacen in some surprise.Jacen stepped in, shut the door behind him, and shoved his lightsaber through the security board—all the way through, his blade emerging into the hallway he'd just left and ruining the control board on that side, as well.The oncoming enemy would have to run a bypass, a procedure that would take at least a couple of minutes.He looked at Thrackan again.His cousin seemed frozen by Jacen's new tactic.Then Thrackan slapped the control board on his side of the doorway.The door slid down.Jacen ran to it and slapped the OPEN button, but the door remained in place.Jacen grinned again.Thrackan did learn fast: he'd locked the door this time.Jacen drove his lightsaber into the top of the door, shearing through the machinery that held the door in place.In a moment he'd be through, and he could use the Force to lift the door out of the way.Dimly, he heard the ringing of boots on metal flooring beyond the door as Thrackan ran away.“No, you're not,” Ben told the ungainly assembly of droid components.“Anakin Solo's dead.He died when I was little.”The couplings where the droid's torso units met its arm attachments lifted noisily, a gesture that looked like a human shrug.“Yes, I did die,” it said.“And I became a ghost, and I was eventually drawn here to inhabit this mutated clone body, where I could help my ancestors, the Corellians.”“That's not a clone body,” Ben protested.“It's a droid body.”The head swiveled so the droid could look down at itself.“You're wrong, little cousin.Or you're deliberately trying to confuse me.I suspect the latter.You're here to sabotage this station, aren't you? To destroy it, so the Corellians can never enjoy freedom and independence?”“Boy, have they got you programmed.” Ben took a step forward, his lightsaber up in ready position.With his free hand, he gestured at the droid's head.If he could use the Force to wrench it aside, he might be out of the droid's visual receptors, allowing him to jump in and attack without the droid seeing what was comingBen convulsed and his vision blurred.He felt his entire body twitch and heard his lightsaber hit the floor and roll away, humming for a moment before its safety circuits switched the power off.He shook his head and his vision began to clear.He was a meter off the floor, the air around him shimmering.His legs still twitched.The droid shrugged again.“I'm sorry about that.It's an anti-Jedi defensive feature installed by my other cousin, Thrackan Sal-Solo.It constantly monitors brain-wave activity in an area.When centers of the brain that tend to become active when Force powers are being utilized are detected, it turns on.Repulsors under the floor hold the Jedi safely above the ground, and electrical emissions—mostly painless—interfere with the Jedi's concentration.See, you've stopped using Force powers, and it has stopped shocking you.Efficient, isn't it?”“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Ben reached down to draw his lightsaber back up to his hand.and jerked and jolted again as the defensive system electrocuted him a second time.After a few seconds of recovery, he said, “I guess it really works.”“It does, doesn't it? So, what were you going to do here?”“Destroy the station, or at least disable whatever they're using to regain control of the repulsor weapon.” Ben looked dubiously at the droid.“I guess that's you.”Pounding began on the other side of the door.Ben winced.The guards outside would be calling for reinforcements.And even as badly as he'd damaged the door, it would still be only a few minutes before they had it open.He'd failed.Well, not quite yet.“They tell you they're going to use the station's weapon to stay independent,” Ben said.“And that would be fine if that's what it was all about.But it's not.They're lying to you.The first, big lie is that you're Anakin Solo, and that you're in a living body.You're not.You're a droid.”The droid sighed.“Yes, yes.Of course.”“It's true! They needed Anakin Solo's bio- bio-whatsis—”“Biometric.”“Yeah, biometric data to control the repulsor weapon.So they probably got his fingerprints from old records.They would have reconstructed his brain waves from whatever medical recordings they could find.Probably had to adjust them and mess with them until they could affect the station controls.And they installed them all in you, so they'd have an Anakin Solo who would think and behave like a human.but do whatever they say.”“I'm Anakin Solo.I'm a Jedi.I have control over the Force.See?” The droid extended an arm, and Ben's lightsaber flew from where it had rolled into its hand.“That's not the Force.I would have felt it if it was the Force.” Ben considered
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